


Recovery

by JeS3004



Series: Me [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Anorexia, Assault, Bulimia, Bullying, Death, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeS3004/pseuds/JeS3004
Summary: A scaled look at my life since 4th grade.
Series: Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620541
Kudos: 8





	1. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An introduction to the story

People often ask high schoolers to look back on their life and pinpoint their pivotal moments. Most people say their birth, when they’ve turned a certain age, or something along those lines. Instead my mind always jumps to my recovery arch. When you tell someone you have an eating disorder one will normally worry about your health. However, when you’re fat people will congratulate you and ask you for your secret. Society's expectations of what healthy looks like ruined my mental and physical health. It all started in fourth grade, the day before my birthday. I was happy with my body and who I was as a person until my peers looked at me as different. No fourth grader wants to be seen as different. That night I sat in my room and thought about what they had said. I felt myself spirling hearing the words, fat, ugly, pig echoing in my head. Then I heard a voice that said, “I can help you prove them wrong; I can make you be in control.” I listened. For now we’ll call that voice Mia. Over the coming months Mia “helped” me. I began eating less and less; and what little I did eat didn’t last for long. But it was working no one caught on, at least at first. By summer I had lost 70 pounds and weighed 5.5 stone. I was happy but Mia wasn’t, Mia still thought I was fat. By that point my parents had found out and decided to send me to “camp”. While there I learnt new techniques; hiding food, self harm, exercising. By the end of summer they released me, a pumped up balloon, filled with tube feed meals and IV fluids. I felt gross at a whopping 160 pounds; and my new found voice, we’ll call her Ana, agreed. She forced me back on track. Eating next to nothing and exercising like a professional. She was better, less visible. No constant fear of smelling like acid. She was fast and powerful. By the end of September I was back on track and by summer I was at my all time lowest of 56 pounds or 4 stone. By then I was no longer in control, she was. I got sent back to “camp” again however this time I tried to get better. I ate, I “threw up” feelings rather than lies, I got better. I don’t remember how much I weighed when I got released, and at first it didn’t matter to me. Then I started to notice them again. The stares, the hate, the people, the words; “Fat”, “ugly”, “stupid”, “weird”, “do us all a favour and kill your self”.


	2. The End?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seventh grade

That was sixth grade. I thought seventh grade would be better; or if not better at least different. It wasn’t. If anything it was worse. I had lost Ana and Mia and without them I was weak. I started the summer at 150 pounds, by then I was tracking again, and by the time school started I was at 175 pounds. My peers noticed; “stay puft”, “Dumbo”, “fag”, the names were unending. I suppressed the urge to starve and purge by cutting or burning. But self harm was harder to hide than Ana or Mia. They, my peers, found out. I thought they might let up, or be afraid to go near me, but I was wrong. “Wrong way”, “up does the job not across”, “freak”, even my “friends” joined in. By May I had had enough. During her, Mrs. Mann’s, class instead of learning, I wrote the first draft of my letter. I wrote my final draft during lunch hoping, thinking, no one saw. I went to the bathroom and made two “deep” cuts across both wrists.


	3. “The New School”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer of seventh grade

The best part about new schools is that no one knows you so you can be who you want. When I transferred to “The New School” for the summer I fought my fears and tried to be the real me. I wore black, skinny jeans with a chain and packer as well as a binder, black shirt and leather jacket. To everyone I met I was a boy. And it worked for a while. I was liked, I wasn’t afraid to come to school, I was ok with being me. But all good things come to an end, right. After a month someone I knew from “camp” came. They told everyone that “I wasn't who I seemed to be”. People stopped coming near me. They wouldn’t sit near me, they started whispering about me behind my back. Then one day when I went to use the bathroom two upperclassers (10-12 graders) were waiting in the bathroom to see if they could prove it. “What’re you doing DEADNAME”, stupid, nieve, me told them that I had to pee. They told me that if I had to pee I should use the urinal. When I told them to move they grabbed my pants to feel that I didn't have a bulge, picked me up by my shirt, and said “So it’s true, you are a freak. In that case...” ; At that moment they carried me out of the bathroom and threw me into the mirror that was outside the girls restroom “freaks go in there not in here”. To this day, I am still afraid to use public restrooms. After another week at the “school” summer break was over and I went to yet another new school.


	4. New School Attempt 2, YWA, and accepting me.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eighth grade

This time it was different. I withdrew, I avoided everyone. I was afraid of everyone, but more importantly I was afraid of being myself. I still used JackSam (later JS then JeS) over my DEADNAME, but I stopped trying to look good; I stopped trying to pass. I often carried my pocket knife in my backpack. Even though I knew that I could get suspended, or worse, but I didn’t care because at least that way I could protect myself and that made me less anxious. I knew that I wasn’t a girl, but I also thought that I was wrong for feeling that. I always knew I was different but until I met others like me, I never had the words to describe who I was. Around a month after starting at YWA I started making friends; not just people who I was friendly with, but real friends who were like me. They taught me the words to describe myself; masculine gender fluid, asexual, panromantic. These were tangible labels that I fell under that I used to define myself. They also taught me that it was ok to be a nerd. With that knowledge I helped our school get adopted by a sister school in Northern California for FRC. I was extremely excited to be able to “help” another school build their bot for competition. Then kickoff happened. A few weeks later, a week and a half before bag day our sister school told us they couldn’t build anything and that it was all up to us. Now let me just put this in perspective; their fifty person team expected us to plan, build, wire, code, and overall make a 125 pound (before battery and bumpers, closer to 150 pound after those things) functioning robot in a week and a half. To add to the challenge there were only two people at our school who were even remotely interested; me and our programmer, Justin (but I just called him code bot, he called me bob cause I built stuff). This meant that for those 11 days I ate, drank, and slept robotics. I would get to school at 5 AM and leave at 12:30 AM. I skipped class; but we got it done. Even though it was stressful, it was also unbelievably fun. By the time FRC was over it was May.


	5. Transitioning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going back to public school

In May of 8th grade my parents told me that I had to go back to MI. When they told me this, it was as if I was drowning, but the harder I struggled to get my head above water the further down I sank. I felt lost; I had built up this strong supportive community of teachers and friends, and all that was just being ripped out from underneath me. It ended up being too much, and for the first time in 544 days I did it, I cut. It should have scared me that I did it or that It took longer than I had remembered to stop bleeding, but it didn’t. The only part that scared me was how well it worked, and how easy it was to do again. Over the summer I went to “fat camp” or CPT and German boarding school. After a fun summer of making friends and learning, I jumped head first back into MI. It was all I had feared it to be but at the same time it was better. While people still called me DEADNAME, it bothered me less. I had learned, I had grown, or at least I thought I had. Then they remembered, and it started all over again. The words hurt but not like the last time this time it was different; I had changed. Sure I was cutting almost every day, but I wanted to live, and that was strange. Sure I was still different but I was slowly learning to accept that. Then it happened.


	6. The party

It was Thursday April 12th and I got a text from Justin. “Hey long time no see. I am having a party tomorrow and was wondering if you wanted to come.” Now a little background on Justin. Justin was one of three children whose mom was a heroin addict at the time of their birth. To keep them from going through withdrawal, she put heroin in their milk. Justin got clean in 5th grade when he got kicked out of school for the first time. Jessica, his sister, got clean in 6th grade when she saw how happy Justin was. Jessie never got clean. I told Justin I would only go if I could stay sober (he was only clean from heroin but still smoked and drank). His response surprised me. I had expected a push back but instead he said, “Great. You have med training, right? You can be our emergency person.”. I thought that would be fine, that I would be fine; I wish I could say I was right. That night, things escalated quickly. Jessie had overdosed and was acting without caution. I took it upon myself to watch him to make sure he was ok. Later that night, Jessica came to get me because she was having problems of her own. Against my better judgement, I left Jessie by himself. While I was out of the room I heard noises and then a SLAM. He had jumped out of the window, in his crazed state, aiming for the pool, but missed cracking his head open. He died and I still partially blame myself.


	7. Facing Fears and Fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer school

Over the summer I did school in an attempt to get more PE and some english on my transcript. I did creative writing instead of “English 9” because I didn’t want to do any of it and I sure as heck was not waking up that early for english. At first, my attitude towards the course was that I was just doing it to see if I was “good enough” to stop going to YWA permanently; however, as the course continued, Michael helped me gain a love of writing that I had never had before. His class provided a space to be vulnerable without fearing the consequences. Our “final” for the course was to make a book of our classes, writing, and then performing what we wrote at island books. The thought of this terrified me to the point where I almost dropped the course. Through talking to Michael, he agreed to let me publish my work anonymously. That made the task feel a little less daunting, now I just had to figure out how to read and feel vulnerable in front of random people. That was less easy. I still don’t know how I ended up doing it without crying, but I did. Overall I learned that just because something is challenging doesn’t mean that it can't be fun. I met people, made friends, and more importantly decided that Crest was something I wanted to try.


	8. Acceptance, Community, Opportunities, and Avoiding Toxicity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tenth grade

On the first day of school I learned that even with Crest time, it was a hike from the high school to Crest; however, after only fifteen minutes in class I found that it was worth it. I knew no one in class and yet I instantly felt welcomed. Within the first five minutes in class I met Clint and Torin, they along with Caleb who I met a couple months later, would become my closest friends throughout the year. Over the course of the year, the Crest essentials became ingrained in me, and it showed in my schoolwork. I used grit and learned that even writing to a prompt can be fun. About a month into the year I started isolating myself. I felt like by trying to be friendly I was being annoying and that I was being a burden to the few friends I had. In this period I gained my second and third attempts. The school found out, my parents found out a mellowed down lie. Even still they got in my way. No WiFi, no this, no that, I felt what little control I had slipping away. It scared me but the static, the pain, kept calling out to me; beckoning me to come closer, to cut, to burn, to feel anything involving pain. I listened to the static more than I listened to my friends. Overall I was not a fun person to hang out with. Around February, my parents caught on to the fact that I was using their credit card without asking. After I got back from DC, where I got to talk to senators and congressmen, they took everything. I lost the ability to hold Her back anymore. However She was different, She had less control this time. Over the summer I went back to martial arts. At first I felt all those same feelings of inadequacy that I had felt when Mia had first arrived; but after a couple of weeks, I had gained back my confidence. On my last week of camp I tested and passed my test for deputy black belt (Il don bo). On the last weekend of summer break, I went to Pax. This year it was different because I had gotten accepted to be a bodyguard for one shift on Saturday. That alone would have been cool, but I had gotten assigned to Jacksepticeye. Jack had been a role model to me since fourth grade. If someone had told me I was dreaming I would have believed them. I got to spend six hours with the sole person who stayed consistent in my life through everything.


	9. Robots , Friends, and Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting better

You would think that “losing” a diagnosis would be good. But those words tell the problem; at least for me. “Losing” a diagnosis felt like I had lost a part of my identity, a part of me. At the start of this year, I felt like my whole world was swirling around me; for so long I had been including my mental illnesses as a part of my identity, and then just as quickly as it had been assigned to me it had been removed. I no longer “had” an eating disorder, I was no longer depressed. Sure I still had to actively ignore calories and the little voice in the back of my head that said “fat”, or “ugly” , or “pig” every time I ate; but I was “normal”. I was no longer in the FIP category or the R&WI program. I was free from the three small “sugar” pills in the morning and the two cold tablets at night. But for some reason I wasn’t happy. I still felt dumb, I still put on my fake face and came to school and tried to look normal, but the voices overwhelmed me. Then I had a chance to do the right thing. Someone had left their wallet on the bus. I had the chance to do the right thing and just turn it in and be done with it. But I listened to the voice “take the money, they don’t need it, you can use it”. I got caught, on Yom kippur of all days. When they told me that they had to contact my mom it felt like the whole world had been ripped out from underneath me. I didn’t go back to french. Instead I went down to Crest. When there, I felt my mind spinning, spiraling, slipping. I thought I knew what I had to do. I took the strap from my binder into the bathroom with me and tied it around my neck. I let it restrict my airflow and hoped that it would work, but then I heard someone coming, I hid the strap just as Sarah came in; I had chickened out, that marked attempt four. I kind of told Michael but not really; I lied about most of the details, so he got me to see Ariel. After my attempt, I was determined to connect with my friends, stop isolating myself, and overall get happy. I joined robotics. Now almost everyone in robotics says that it is what is causing their mental instability but for me it it what is empowering me to keep trying, to keep going. It is what is making me happy. Between the small group of VRC and the big group of FRC I have made real friends like the ones I had at YWA. While I can’t give all of the credit of my heightened recovery to robotics, I know that without my understanding teachers, no amount of fun and friends would have gotten me this far.


	10. Memory

When I am told to think back on my life, my mind is always drawn to my recovery arch. People think that in order to recover you have to forget. I feel that the opposite is true; that to truly recover you have to remember, not just the bad things or the illness, but truly remember what happened. Not just remembering that you slit your wrists in the bathroom in seventh grade but remembering that your friends had seen the letter and found you in the bathroom cleaning your arm. Not just remembering that you felt like a failure but remembering that they told you everything was ok. Remembering that they brought you to the counselor. Recovery is about remembering and balance; neither of these are easy, but both are equally crucial to getting “better”. So while I might not be “better” I am at least HOPEful for what’s to come.


End file.
